This lighting installation was a rather tall order on short notice, so I took a rather brute force approach. Robert provided me with a MIDI transcription of the song, broken down by instrument. I used his Logic Pro file to send OSC triggers via Osculator to Processing. There the different instruments triggered different behaviors in different parts of the installation depending on the part of the song in which they occured. Those behaviors were mostly orders to fire a certain number of lights within a certain region of the installation, lit for durations that were random within constraints. A light was triggered by sending it's ID and the duration via UART to the Arduino Mega assigned to that bank of bulbs. The Arduinos in turn switched the solid-state relay for the assigned light and set a timer to switch it off. The relays were switching 120v mains power to the fast-lighting Philips ballast attached to each bulb.
The entire project, including design and hand fabrication of the switching boards, and all programming, was executed in four days, with the space unavailable after midnight. The installation included 20,000 feet of wire and it's a wonder that nobody was electrocuted. Next time I would use XBees or WiFi to send the triggers wirelessly to microcontrollers and relays local to each portion of the installation. I'm proud of what we accomplished given the tight timeframe and shoestring budget.
This is what was plugged into my laptop to make that lightshow happen. 0_o
